Taking Dread Out Of Gym Class

School gyms remind many people of last place finishes and never getting picked for the team. But at Madison Junior High School, physical education is about fitness, not first place. CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports.

In addition to gym outfits, the kids at Madison wear heart rate monitors and work out on state-of-the-art exercise equipment, just as adults do at health clubs.

"What started it was, really, statistics out there that kids in America are not really in very good shape," said physical education teacher Phil Lawler.

Lawler and other teachers gave themselves a failing grade and came up with a revolutionary approach to their physical education curriculum.

They replaced often sluggish touch football games with energy intensive six-man volleyball. And the old one-mile run also has changed; instead, students run for 12 minutes. No one loses in this race for fitness.

"I don't like racing, because then all the other kids make fun of you because you're slower than them or something," says student Christine Snyder.

With heart-rate monitors, students like Christine were able to convince coaches that theough they are slow, they aren't slacking off.

"After teaching for 25 years and coaching, I thought I had a pretty good idea by looking at a kid whether they were working hard or not," Lawler says. "Wow, when we got the heart monitors, I didn't realize how far off I was."

In fact, Christine's heart rate shows she is pushing herself harder than the school's top athletes.

Illinois is currently the only state that requires daily gym class for all of its students. In fact, an increasing number of places are dropping it altogether. The reason may be that today's lawmakers have bad memories of their own phys ed experience.

"We've got a whole group of population out there that have some lifetime memories that weren't very positive about their experience from being embarrassed because they weren't very talented or very skilled," Lawler says.

Reported By Cynthia Bowers